Blu-ray or
separate DVD available everywhere May 28, 2013, through Legacy Recordings

Judas Priest, the heavy metal legends
whose influence on generations of musicians and metalheads is incalculable, celebrate
their 40th year as recording artists this year with the release of
the live concert EPITAPH.
A unique live career retrospective, EPITAPH will be
released on Blu-ray and separate DVD on May
27th through Legacy
Recordings, a division of SONY MUSIC
ENTERTAINMENT. This release precedes
a new studio album by Judas Priest which the band are working on now.

Heavy
metal historians will regard EPITAPH as the most far-reaching
live concert recording in the band's career.
The set revisits the climactic closing date of the 50-week "Epitaph World Tour," captured live at London’s HMV Hammersmith Apollo on May 26, 2012. Adding to the drama is the fact that this was
Judas Priest’s final large-scale world tour ever. EPITAPH’s 23 tracks
represent at least one song from every one of the band’s 14 studio albums, from
1974’s Rocka Rolla (“Never Satisfied”) to 2008’s Nostradamus (“Prophecy”).

In the special case of British Steel,
four songs are featured: “Rapid Fire,” “Metal Gods,” “Breaking The Law,” and
perennial set closer, “Living After Midnight.”
Others exempted from the one-song-quota are the LPs which appeared
before and after British Steel.
The first of these is 1979’s Hell Bent
For Leather (UK title: Killing Machine) which
lends the title song as well as “The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged
Crown).” The other LP is 1982’s Screaming For
Vengeance, source of “The Hellion,” “Electric Eye,” and “You’ve
Got Another Thing Coming.”

“They
have epitomized the genre with their Harley riding frontman, rapid-fire guitar
assaults, and spectacular stage shows,” wrote journalist Bryan Reesman in his
liner notes for 2004's leather-bound, metal-spiked Metalogy
box set. “Influential, innovative, and
exuberant in expression,” he wrote, “they are the true Metal Gods who have been
as unwavering in their desire to expand the boundaries of their music as they
have been in crossing international borders to deliver it to their disciples.”

“Unabashedly
committed to their cause, and unrepentant in proclaiming themselves a true
heavy metal band even when others have shied away from the term, Judas Priest
have forever been defenders of the faith.”